A flat-panel display is an electronic display device composed of an array of display picture elements called pixels, arranged in a two-dimensional matrix. Some examples of a flat-panel display are electroluminescent devices, AC plasma panels, DC plasma panels, PALC (plasma addressed liquid crystal) and field emission displays.
The basic structure of a flat-panel plasma display comprises two glass plates with a conductor pattern of electrodes on the inner surfaces of each plate which is separated by a gas-filled gap. The conductors are configured in a x-y matrix with horizontal electrodes and vertical column electrodes deposited at right angles to each other with thin-film or thick-film photoimaging techniques well known in the art.
For example a plasma display device is shown in FIG. 1, transparent electrodes 1 and addressing electrodes 2 are arranged in the form of a matrix and plasma discharge is produced at selected intersecting points of such electrodes 1 and 2 exciting the fluorescent material 3 which emits light. Barrier ribs 4 being of matrix or linear structure as a display element is arranged between the front glass substrate 5 and the rear glass substrate 6 to form a plurality of cells. Bus electrodes 7 are used for connecting transparent electrodes 1 for display lines which are sequentially selected one by one, erasing cells of the selected display line, and displaying data to the selected cells are shown to be formed on the surface of the transparent electrodes 1 on the front glass substrate 5, a dielectric layer 8 serves as an insulation layer and is formed over the transparent electrodes 1 and the bus electrodes 7. A protective MgO film 9 is formed over the dielectric layer 8.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,851,732, herein incorporated by reference, discloses plasma display panel devices fabricated by using photosensitive thick film conductor compositions wherein a black electrode is present between the substrate and a conductor arrangement electrode, and methods for their manufacture.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,385,499; 4,975,104; 5,674,634; 5,723,945, and 5,714,840 disclose variants of plasma display devices and various methods of manufacture.
Resolution and brightness of the images in the AC PDP device depend on electrode width, interconnecting conductor pitch and transparency of the dielectric layer. For example, regarding the conductor pitch, barrier ribs of plasma display panels most desirably have a configuration of about 100 microns in height and are as narrow as possible, preferably less than 20 microns in width and spaced at about 120 microns pitch. This requirement is necessary in order to achieve a color pixel pitch of 72 lines per inch, the printing industry standard point of type, which is equivalent to a sub-pixel pitch of 216 lines per inch with a red, green, and blue phosphor color arrangement. This pattern is commonly used to achieve color output in flat panel and many cathode ray tube displays with diagonal dimensions on the order of 20 to 40 inches used for displaying graphic and textual information in computer terminal equipment and television receivers.
It is difficult to obtain fine line and space resolution for the formation of the electrodes and interconnecting conductor patterns when these materials are applied by conventional patterning techniques such as screen printing, sputtering or chemical etching methods. For the backpanel most of the current barrier rib processes require the electrodes to be patterned first. The present invention will allow the backpanel electrodes, dielectric layers and phosphor channel coatings to be applied after the barrier ribs are created. Therefore the present invention demonstrates the use of fibers or ribbons wherein phosphors, conductive metals or dielectric particles are integrated into a fiber or ribbon structure which is utilized to form various structures used in products for the electronics industry.